I had the chance to teach agile ideas to some project portfolio managers, or people who were considering setting up a PMO to manage the project portfolio. Many of these folks had a real concern: how to manage “resources.” (People to you and me.) Part of what I said to them was that resource management […]
I am very happy to announce that Manage Your Project Portfolio: Increase Your Capacity and Finish More Projects, 2nd edition is out! This edition has these additions from the first edition: A chapter on scaling. How do you move from a team or a couple of groups’ portfolio to the entire organization? Updated chapter on
I am leading the August workshop, Practical Product Ownership, starting next week. I still have room in that workshop. If you struggle with the role of the Product Owner, this workshop is for you. You will learn to deliver what the business needs, with your team. I hope you join us. If you are wondering
An agile coach asked me this question, “What tool should our senior leadership use for managing the program/portfolio?” That question told me these things: Her leadership is confused about the difference between a program (one business deliverable composed of many projects) and the project portfolio (a picture of the committed work that implements the organizational
This morning, I read For Economy, Aging Population Poses Double Whammy (registration required). If you don’t read the WSJ, here are some interesting takeaways: On average, every 10% increase in the share of state’s population over the age of 60 reduced per capita growth in gross domestic product by 5.5%. … The authors note: “An older
I was at an experience report at Agile 2016 last week, Scaling Without Frameworks-Ultimate Experience Report. One of the authors, Daniel Vacanti said this: Flow focuses on unblocking work. Iterations (too often) focus on the person doing the work. At the time, I did not know Daniel’s twitter handle. I now do. Sorry for not
In Part 1, I talked about small stories/chunks of work, checking in all the time so you could build often and see progress. That assumes you know what done means. Project “done” means release criteria. Here are some stories about how I started using release criteria. Back in the 70s, I worked in a small development group.
Would you like to release your product at any time? I like it when releases are a business decision, not a result of blood, sweat, and tears. It’s possible, and it might not be easy for you. Here are some stories that showed you how I did it, long ago and more recently. Story 1: Many years
(I updated this post in May 2025 to more carefully describe what I mean by collaboration and how that differs from cooperation. I struck through collaboration when I meant cooperation.) A colleague asked mobbing last week on Twitter. Here’s the short answer, including pairing so you can see everything in one place: Swarming has a
When I think of POs and the team, I think of learning in several loops: The PO learns when the team finishes small features or creates a prototype so the PO can see what the team is thinking/delivering. The team learns more about its process and what the PO wants. If the Product Manager sees